stable hallucination

   A term coined in or shortly before 1866 by the German psychiatrist Karl Ludwig Kahlbaum (1828-1899). Kahlbaum uses the term to denote a hallucination which displays a minimum of variation over time. He conceptualizes this type of hallucination as a variant of the * centripetal type of hallucinations (i.e. *phantoms in Kahlbaum's jargon). Today the term stable hallucination is used chiefly to denote a * stereotyped hallucination which arises in the context of a migrainous or epileptic *aura or in the context of * hallucinatory epilepsy. In the latter case, hallucinations typically take the form of a * complex or * compound hallucination lasting some 10-30 s, recurring at indefinite intervals, with each episode constituting a replica of the previous one.

   References

   Blom, J.D., Sommer, I.E.C. (2009). Auditory hallucinations. Cognitive and Behavioral Neurology (in press).

   Kahlbaum, K. (1866). Die Sinnesdelirien. Allgemeine Zeitschrift für Psychiatrie und psychischgerichtliche Medizin, 23, 56-78.

   Walter, H., Podreka, I., Steiner, M., Suess, E., Benda, N., Hajji, M., Lesch, O.M., Musalek, M., Passveg, V. (1990). A contribution to classification of hallucinations. Psy-chopathology, 23, 97-105.